Will The Christians Save Liberty?

His eyes shift to the sides, checking to make sure everyone who might matter is out of earshot. I have to lean in to hear him.

"You know," he whispers urgently--like he has to get it out to cleanse himself--"I think I might be a libertarian." The look on his face betrays a sense of wonder, as though he's found himself going down a road he thought was still under construction.

I keep finding myself on the receiving end of these political party dime-bag deals. For my brothers and sisters in Christ who need to say it out loud to someone, who need to come out of the political closet, I'm the mother-confessor. In our circles I've been the one to proclaim libertarianism most often, (and this fact should surprise no one). Ten years ago it was a crackpot idea. Libertarianism was the party of dopers and diddlers and dilletantes. What sane churchgoing person wants to align himself with the toothless crankhead who refuses to pay his taxes?

But there are those of us who do not care to be condemned to repeat the mistakes of history. We've read about the bloody struggle for religious freedom and we remember the lions in the Colisseum, the Inquisition, the martyrdom of the Anabaptists. We're Christians. Two thousand years of our own religious history gives testament to the need for seperation of church and state. And we are starting to realise that the only way to have freedom of religion is to take back the roles of the Church by relegating the State to its most limited form.

Tony Campolo says, and I believe rightly, that Jesus transcends politics. You might say that I would agree with this wholeheartedly.

If Jesus transcends politics, do Christians have any business participating in the political process? Phil Wilson asks the question that tips the rest of the dominoes. My answer, and the answer of most of the believing libertarians I've met is "yes". More and more, however, it seems that our participation in Caeser's realm is that role of demanding liberty from tyranny. Most of us are electing to exert pressure from the outside to shrink the government, even though that act is somewhat like sitting on a sponge. It's soggy, uncomfortable and leaves you with an embarrassingly wet rump. In the end the sponge is still pretty waterlogged and you look mighty foolish. But if you don't want the sponge to grow large enough to suck the life blood out of you, it's best to keep trying.

But what of the dopers, diddlers and dilletantes who are growing pot and having sex with who-knows-who? That's not very Christian, now is it? No it isn't. I happen to think that perhaps it's best to lead by example, to let Christ live in you and to let others see Christ through you. I'd rather that be how we change the world, because laws do not grant salvation. Anyone will tell you that any system of legislated morality is a knife-edge that cuts both ways. Today Christian morality may be running the show. But what happens when the other guy takes hold of the wheel? In the past it hasn't been good.

If the whispered conversations I have in the balcony of my church and in restaurants from Hermitage to Franklin are any indication, the Religious Right will cease to be important in the next decade. Neither right nor left, the libertarians are the new voice for taking back the country.